The present invention is directed to a method and circuit arrangement for checking the observance of prescribed transmission bit rates of the individual virtual connections for asynchronous transmission of message cells of fixed length during the course of virtual connections in a switching equipment.
Such a method, also referred to as a "leaky bucket" method is disclosed by European Patent 0 381 275. This publication only teaches that a constant value that, for example, corresponds to a power of two is used as a proportionality factor in the formation of the variable count value for the decrementation of the momentary counter readings of the individual counter devices. However, what is not taught is how such a proportionality factor is to be in fact defined for the individual, virtual connections.